Penn as Ivy king? Who would have believed it?

No, you couldn't see this coming. Especially if you were at Franklin Field on a cold first Saturday in October as Penn got manhandled by Dartmouth in the Ivy League opener.

The Quakers were going to streak through the rest of the Ivy? Zero chance. Zero. Zero percent chance. With a new coach, coming off a two-win season?

Although . . .

Penn had beaten Villanova the week before Dartmouth, winning that one for the first time in 104 years. Couldn't see that coming at all, coming off a bad opening loss at Lehigh. So make it a 0.2 percent chance.

The fact is, hosting Cornell this Saturday with at least a share of the Ivy title on the line dwarfs the Villanova win for craziness. Getting past both Yale and Princeton? That's within the realm. Going to Harvard and stopping the Crimson's 22-game win streak?

How did all that happen? For all Penn's historical Ivy success, you don't just wake up the ghosts.

"I knew we had some good players," said first-year Quakers coach Ray Priore, the former defensive coordinator. "I knew we had some talented kids. Depending on what we did with them."

Getting off a plane from Atlanta last winter after a recruiting trip, Priore, newly in charge, got a phone call from an area code he didn't recognize. The call was from John Reagan, the offensive coordinator at Kansas, who had held that job at Rice previously. Reagan had been on Temple's staff and had spent the 1997 season at Penn.

"He was calling to recommend somebody else for an offensive line job," Priore said. "I told him, 'It may not just be an offensive line job. It may be a coordinator. Would you be interested?' "

He was, and a match was made. Bob Benson, a longtime friend on a parallel track around the East Coast, left his job as defensive coordinator at Albany to replace Priore.

"First-time head coach, you've got to surround yourself with people who can run their show and do it," Priore said. "It's my first experience with mapping practice, alumni development - there's so much to it. I couldn't call the defense."

Priore said that in the preseason camp, he was probably more worried about the defense and its depth and youth.

"Offense, I knew we were doing some good things," Priore said.

The 41-20 Dartmouth loss was bookended by the 24-13 victory over Villanova and a 48-45 loss to 13th-ranked Fordham, another scholarship program. Those two games offered confidence without beating up the Quakers. Still, it was hard to place the Quakers, even after they took care of Columbia and former Quakers coach Al Bagnoli, 42-7.

The wins just kept coming. Sophomore Justin Watson had been a big-time receiver. Quarterback Alek Torgersen shook off an injury and kept showing he was the real thing. The junior already is up to fourth on Penn's all-time career passing list.

"When John watched him, John said that when he was at Rice, he was at the same level, at that 1-A level," Priore said. "He said his arm talent was at that same level."

Penn's defense has gotten better every week, the coach said.

"Attention to detail," Priore said. "Very rarely are our kids not where they should be. If we get beat, it's because somebody is more athletic than we are. It's not because of some breakdown. The discipline is exceptional."

Quakers tight end Ryan O'Malley, a captain, talked about how there's always a point in every season where there's a before and after. The Dartmouth game felt like that point.

"Afterward, we finally got it together," O'Malley said. "Even with the loss to Fordham the next week, you could tell it was way more of a team effort. A close game to another good team."

The earlier Villanova game was huge, he said, but it was all ups and downs during that early stretch.

O'Malley said he met Reagan, the offensive coordinator, and knew right away it was going to work.

"He's a hands-on coach, he's a player's coach," O'Malley said. "He gets on us for the small things because he expects perfection. I think that's huge."

You never come into a season expecting to lose, he said. Getting picked to finish sixth in the league was motivation.

"You go 2-8, you can't really expect to get picked anything other than sixth," O'Malley said. "We had a complete overhaul of the entire program, pretty much. We knew exactly what we were going to come out and do and we were ready to do it."

Of Priore as a head coach, O'Malley said, "He's more of a player's coach. He's more hands-on. . . . His presence is felt on the field."

Obviously, there is a trap here just ahead. Cornell is 1-8 having just gotten past Columbia, when a lone field goal was enough for a W.

The irony here is that everybody now expects Penn, 6-3 overall and 5-1 in the Ivies, to get its share of league supremacy. But even that fits the story line. Little has gone as forecast, right down to suddenly being in the driver's seat.

"It's been a pretty amazing year," O'Malley said.

mjensen@phillynews.com

@jensenoffcampus